Stucco Wall Leak // Rain leak testing in Los Angeles

Stucco Wall Leak and Rain leak testing in Los Angeles

Believe it or not, water leaking through stucco walls is extremely common in Los Angeles homes. Despite what many people think, stucco is not a water-resistant substrate. In fact, it sucks water up like a sponge. Afterwhich, water will run down the inside of the wall along the building paper. Sounds pretty odd huh?

Our company performs stucco wall leak and rain leak detection throughout Los Angeles. We test stucco walls annually. Not just during the rainy season.

What causes Stucco wall rain leaks?

Water leaking through OSB building materials

The causes of stucco leaks are many. Suffice it to say, however, we can narrow them down to only a few for you here.

Holes in the building wrap

Deteriorated building paper wrap

Rusted nails in the building wrap

Other penetrations into the building wrap

As much as we love performing stucco wall leak detection in Los Angeles, its a very difficult task. As a matter of act, it has to be one of the most difficult rain leak tests we perform on homes and buildings. We proceeded to remove wallcovering material. Prior to stucco leak testing. Stucco leak detection takes time. How much time? Well, the average test for an 8×8 area is over an hour.

Water leaking through stucco walls

Missing building paper

So you can imagine how surprised we were to find a stucco wall leak when we were scheduled to test the roof and windows. Because of our test of the roof, secondary water running down the wall made its way into the building. Likewise, our window test provided the exact same results. Water into the building from stucco leaks.

Naturally, our next step was to isolate the wall in various locations and perform isolated stucco wall testing. Obviously, our goal is to source water leaking through stucco walls. Hence, the need for isolation. We selected random areas to be rain leak and stucco leak tested.

As seen in these results, water penetrated the stucco wall in multiple locations throughout. In the end, our client decided to have the entire house re-stuccoed.

Summary

Title

Stucco Wall Leak and Rain leak testing in Los Angeles

Description

Believe it or not, water leaking through stucco walls is extremely common in Los Angeles homes. Despite what many people think, stucco is not a water-resistant substrate. In fact, it sucks water up like a sponge. Afterwhich, water will run down the inside of the wall along with the building paper. Sounds pretty odd huh?